The Marriage Lie(52)
“And now?” My voice is hard, because I don’t forgive her. The edges of my anger are still sharp. This woman dangled the name of a cocktail waitress in front of my nose like a carrot. I’m not exactly calling her by choice.
“And now what?”
I sink onto my front stoop, squinting into the sunshine. “Are you still under an unbelievable amount of pressure to come back with a story now?”
She laughs, but it comes across more ironic than funny. “Well, my boss just suggested I pose as another passenger’s sister, so you tell me.”
I make a neutral sound. This woman lied to me once. Who’s to say she won’t do it again?
“Listen, all I’m saying is that I feel really shitty for lying, and I want to make it up to you. Throw you the proverbial bone.”
“Let me guess. The cocktail waitress’s name.”
“Ex-waitress, actually. It’s Tiffany Rivero, and she served a certain pilot and his rowdy buddies until they cashed out at quarter to three the morning of the crash, and for over six thousand dollars.”
My eyes blow wide, both at her message and the amount. “People spend six thousand dollars at a nightclub?”
“They do when they’re chugging champagne like it’s lemonade, which these guys apparently were. There were also pills being passed around like Tic Tacs.”
I suck in a breath, doing the math in my head. Assuming he got the first flight to Atlanta, probably around six or so, he would have gone straight to the airport, meaning he was functioning on virtually no sleep, and that’s not even taking into account whatever he consumed.
“We can’t know for sure that the pilot was partaking.”
“According to Tiffany, he was. Every single one of them was wasted. And here’s the kicker—everything she told me, she also told Liberty Air officials. Their response? That she must be mistaken, that there are procedures and protocols in place to make sure no pilot enters the cockpit unless 100 percent sober and alert. They tried to make her think she’d imagined it.”
An icy cold blooms in my gut, spreading through it like a cancer. Liberty Air knows about the pilot’s alcohol and drug-fueled bachelor party, and they did nothing. They said nothing. I think about the families I saw at the airport and the memorial, of their tears and palpable grief, and a wave of helpless fury threatens to pull me under. Will is dead because of a pilot’s irresponsibility and an airline’s carelessness.
“Why are you telling me this? I assume this story is about to be blown across every front page of every newspaper and website on the planet.”
“True, but my guilty conscience and I wanted you to hear it here first, and to make sure you understood the implications.” She pauses, the silence short but weighted, and her jokey tone settles into a serious one. “There’s going to be an investigation, Iris, and if this Tiffany chick is legit, if what she says checks out, you and the other families will have Liberty Air by the balls.”
19
When I turn the corner to Inman Perk, Nick is standing on the sidewalk, two water bottles dangling from a fist. White-blond hair, super-sized limbs, doughy belly filling out the bottom of his tucked-in polo shirt like a half-inflated inner tube. I must have been worse off than I thought when I couldn’t place him at the memorial. Big and bulky, he’s not exactly the type of guy you can miss. A pair of pristine Nike sneakers poke out from under his office khakis, from the looks of them, fresh from a shoe box, and I’m suddenly sorry for suggesting we walk the BeltLine in the middle of a workday.
“Hi, Nick.”
“Hey, Iris. Thanks for meeting me. You ready?”
I try to take his emotional pulse, but his eyes are hidden behind dark wraparound sunglasses, his tone and expression guarded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
The thing is, by now I know that whatever Nick wanted to talk to me about, it can’t be good. Why else would he have called six times in half as many days and insisted we meet in person? If I had any doubts, his greeting and body language just now only confirmed it, morphing my suspicion into a dread as dark and sticky as tar.
He passes me one of the bottles, ice-cold and sweating, and we set off for the alley that leads to the trail in painful, stomach-churning silence.
Like on any other sunny spring day, the Atlanta BeltLine, a stretch of parks and trails carved out of the city’s abandoned railroad tracks, is bustling. Lululemon-clad moms pushing strollers compete for space with runners and dog walkers and college kids on skateboards. Nick and I fall in line behind them, following the trail north toward the high-rises of Midtown in the far distance.
“This is incredibly difficult for me,” he says as we emerge from the shade of the Freedom Parkway overpass, and even though he’s starting to sweat through his work shirt, I know he’s not referring to our hike. His head is down, his gaze glued to the pavement. “I hired your husband. I groomed him. In the eight-plus years he worked for me, I promoted him six times. Not because I liked the guy, which I did, but because he deserved it.”
“Okay...” I drag out the word, my heart jumping around too hard, too fast. I feel a “but” coming. It’s bearing down on me like an electric thundercloud, sucking every hair on my body skyward.
“I don’t know how much you know about our business, but most engineers don’t give a crap about where the money comes from. Will was one of those rare breeds that not only cared, he thought about how to bring in more. It’s part of why he was so brilliant at his job, because he could design things the customer didn’t even know they wanted until he showed it to them.” He latches onto my elbow, steers us to the trail’s edge to let a trio of bicyclists pass. “The guy was a genius, but I’m sure you already know that.”